Good grief how complicate it all has been made...

For fun symboles like the € press ctrl+alt+4, this probably only works if: A) the font you are using supports it, and B) your software at the time supports it.

For changing your keyboard settings, as previously mentioned

Start>>Control Panel>>Regional and Language Settings, then find the keyboard tab and set it to english-uk, alternativly, if you are using windows XP you may see a little "en" icon on the far left bottom of your screen, to the left of the date and other icons, left click that and it should provide options for changing your language settings.

:)